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Transitioning from Academia to Industry: Myths and Truths of a career in Data Science
The rise of big data tools and machine learning in industry has meant that companies increasingly have to make data-driven decisions in order to stay competitive in the modern business world. It is estimated that business organizations in the United States would have to employ a total of 1 million data scientists nationwide by 2018. The increasing demand for data scientists in the private sector has led to increased media coverage and hype, such as the Harvard Business Review calling Data Science "The sexiest job of the 21st century". The increased demand for data scientists in industry has led to more scientists leaving academia in order to lend their quantitative skills to solve business problems. In this talk, Sean Grullon will share his experience in leaving academia to a career in Data Science in the private sector, including how data science is defined, how data science is typically used in business, how the skills learned by particle physicists in academia translate to data science, and an overview of trends in the field including an overview of cutting edge machine learning techniques being developed by tech companies such as the IBM Watson group.